«I thought that might be the case,» MacArthur said.
«What was that? 'Know your enemy'?» Pickering asked.
«Your phrase, Fleming, not mine,» MacArthur said, smiling. «And I certainly don't think of you as the enemy.»
«Thank you.»
«Unfortunately, I was never able to find time to receive Colonel Waterson,» MacArthur said, obviously pleased, «and now it won't be necessary, will it?»
Pickering suddenly understood why Douglas MacArthur was pleased that the President had appointed him OSS Deputy Director for Pacific Operations.
He thinks I'm going to get Roosevelt and Donovan off his back.
And in his shoes, I would think the same thing. He knows he's right about the OSS; and he knows I think he's right, and I can plead his case in Washington better even than he can.
Just before Pickering left Washington for his current Pacific trip, the President of the United States had personally given him a subsidiary mission: to convince General Douglas MacArthur to find time in his busy schedule to receive Colonel Waterson.
OSS Director William Donovan had complained to Roosevelt that following a very brief meeting with General Charles A. Willoughby, MacArthur's G-2, shortly after his arrival in Brisbane seven weeks before, Waterson had been waiting in vain for the meeting with MacArthur Willoughby had promised to arrange «just as soon as the Supreme Commander can find time in his schedule.»
When Pickering had raised the subject to MacArthur soon after his arrival in Brisbane, he was told that MacArthur had decided that the OSS was going to bemore trouble than it was worth. Receiving Colonel Waterson would therefore be tantamount to letting the nose of an unwelcome camel into his tent. MacArthur had no intention of doing that.
Pickering thought MacArthur was right. The OSS probably would be more trouble than it would be worth in the kind of war MacArthur was fighting. The situation here was completely different from Europe and Africa, where the OSS had proven very valuable.
It was a relatively simple matter to infiltrate OSS Jedburgh teams into France and other German-occupied areas of the European landmass by parachute or even by small fishing boats setting out from England. Once inside enemy-held territory, agents who spoke the language and were equipped with forged identification papers could relatively easily vanish into the local society, aided by in-place resistance movements. Once in place, OSS agents in Europe could go about their business of blowing up railroad bridges and harbor facilities, of gathering intelligence, and of arranging for resistance groups to be armed and equipped with communications equipment.
None of the conditions that made the OSS valuable in Europe prevailed in the Pacific. For one thing, there was no contiguous landmass. The war in the Pacific was already becoming known as «island hopping.» Hundreds—often thousands—of miles separated Allied bases from Japanese-occupied islands.
Simply infiltrating OSS teams onto a Japanese-held Pacific island would pose enormous—probably insurmountable—logistical problems.
And, with the exception of a few Americans and Filipinos who had refused to surrender when the Philippine Islands had fallen to the Japanese, there was no organized resistance in Japanese-occupied territory anywhere in the Pacific. In other words, there would be no friendly faces greeting OSS agents when they landed. Furthermore, no matter how well he might speak Japanese, no matter how high the quality of his forged identification papers, a Caucasian agent stood virtually no chance of passing himself off as a Japanese soldier, or making himself invisible in a society whose brown-skinned citizens often wore loincloths, filed their teeth, and spoke unusual languages.
And finally, on the Pacific Islands where MacArthur intended to fight, there were very few railroad or highway bridges or industrial complexes to blow up, and really very little intelligence to gather.
Aware that his thinking was probably colored by his personal feelings toward OSS Director Colonel «Wild Bill» Donovan, Pickering thought the very idea of setting the OSS up in the South West Pacific Ocean Area probably had more to do with Donovan playing Washington politics than anything else.
Pickering had little use for Donovan, a law school classmate of President Roosevelt who had been a hignly successful Wall Street lawyer before Roosevelt had appointed him to lead the OSS.
Lawyer Donovan had once been engaged by Chairman of the Board (of the Pacific & Far East Shipping Corporation) Pickering to represent P&FE in a maritime legal dispute. Pickering had liked neither the quality of the legal services rendered—the suit had been decided against them—nor the size of the bill rendered, and had called Donovan on the telephone and bluntly told him so.
William Donovan was not used to people talking to him the way Pickering did; and he was Irish. He was still angry two weeks later when he ran into Pickering in the lobby of the Century Club in New York City. There was some disagreement about who uttered the first unkind remark, but it was universally agreed that only the intervention of friends—strong friends—of both gentlemen had prevented adding to the many Century Club legends a fistfight in the main lobby between two of its most prominent members.
The enmity between the two men had continued after Donovan became Roosevelt's intelligence chief as head of the newly created Office of Strategic Services and Pickering had performed various intelligence services—separate from the OSS—for Navy Secretary Frank Knox, leading to his appointment as head of the highly secret Office of Management Analysis. The new marriage—at Roosevelt's direction—between Pickering and the OSS was likely to become a marriage made in hell from the point of view of everyone except the President.
Brigadier General Fleming Pickering looked at General Douglas A. MacArthur, shrugged, shook his head, took a healthy swallow of his Famous Grouse, and then shook his head again.
«Yes, Fleming?» MacArthur asked. «What is it you are having such a hard time saying?»
«I was wondering how a simple sailor like myself ever wound up between a rock named MacArthur and a hard place named Roosevelt,» Pickering said.
«All I ask of you, Fleming, with every confidence in the world that you are incapable of doing anything else, is to tell the President the truth. I don't think the OSS can play a valuable role here—I wish that it were otherwise—and neither do you.»
Pickering didn't reply.
«Elsewhere in Asia,» MacArthur went on, «India, China, Indochina, Burma, the OSS may prove, under your leadership, to be very useful.»
Christ, I didn't even think of those parts of the world! Are they considered within the area of responsibility of
—
what the hell is my title
?—«
OSS Deputy Director for Pacific Operations «
?
«I hadn't even thought about China, or India,» Pickering thought aloud. «I can't believe that Roosevelt would give me the responsibility for intelligence and covert operations in those areas.»
That's not true. I did think about that when McCoy asked me if he could expect to be sent into the Gobi Desert. And I told him I didn't think so. And I told him that because the Gobi Desert doesn't sound like the Pacific to me.
And now MacArthur is telling me that I'm wrong.
«If I were in his shoes,» MacArthur said, «I would.»
«It borders on the absurd,» Pickering said.